Re: MP3 decoder?

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

labelas@hotmail.com (Labelas Enoreth) wrote:

>supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:
>
>> You never know.  They've ported a raytracing program to
>> the IIGS after all, as well as a 3D modeling and animation
>> program.  The basic idea is let the conversion take place
>> overnight and retrieve the finished product tomorrow
>> morning.  Or evening.  ;-)
>
>Hm, that's POV-Ray, right? Well, I guess that's a good reason to own 2

Bingo!  You know your IIGS trivia.  ;-)

>IIgs's then...have one to simply slave for your acts of bandwidth...(Heh,
>is there a morphing program out there for IIgs? Now that would be
>nifty...oh, except there isn't really quicktime for IIgs...hmm.)

ByteWorks makes a morphing program for the IIGS, believe
it or not!  No, the morphing sequences it generates are not
quicktime.  They are PaintWorks format.  Surprisingly, the
PaintWorks format supports the IIGS 256 color mode!

The program is called Quick Click Morph.  I think Mike
Westerfield might still have some sample morph sequences
on his web site.  He morphed his daughter into his cat with
it.

Also, apparently it is possible to convert some quicktime
video to IIGS format (although limited by available memory).

>> I should be getting a kick butt Mac emulator for my PC soon,
>> btw, after I put a faster CPU chip in it.
>
>Heh, well, as I say about most every emulator, there is no real
>replacement for the real thing. Granted, some emulators are very nice, but
>there aren't that many. (The only emulator I can think of offhand that
>actually improves on the machine rather than being buggy, incomplete, and
>not really that functional is Bernie, and no I'm not trying to get a
>cookie because the Bernie guys visit here, it's just true. So many
>emulators are like 'well, we'll add this...later...and right now you need
>to bend over backwards to get it configured right. Oh and by the way, most
>programs don't work' And even then you miss out on a lot of the fun of a
>real IIgs...adding in random cards of glee...having your monitor short out
>on you...trying to troubleshoot your smartport chain...wait...hmmm...but
>still, there's so much out there that isn't  even touched upon by
>emulation. And last time I checked, the mac emulators weren't very
>impressive. They may load, and run and such, but they were by no means
>complete. But, perhaps there is one now. I am not much of a PC user except
>at school...but then, I'm also the only person at school who boots up the
>IIe over in the corner from time to time..Which has a Apple UDC card and
>CP/M card in it...man do I wish I could convince them to let me have
>that...if it's not gone by the time I get back this semester <sigh>

Depends on the Mac.  For a Centris 610 user, getting a typical
modern PC and running the Gemulator Pro program from
http://www.emulators.com/ will emulate your Mac programs,
including MacOS 8.1 and Microsoft Office and Netscape and
whatnot faster than the real Centris 610!

Now if you have a G3 and want to run PPC software, obviously
Gemulator Pro is not an upgrade.

But you know that e-Machines is making sub-500 dollar
PCs now (thus MUCH cheaper than PPC Macs).  If you
use their ISP service, they'll even give you a couple of
hundred dollar rebate on it!  It is a nice upgrade for a cost
conscious '040 user.  You get to run PC software FAST.
You get to run your old '040 software faster than before.

And that's why I'm interested in this emulator.  The only Mac
stuff I'm interested in is old 68k stuff that I once used.

Gemulator Pro is the most complete Mac emulator I've seen.
Maybe that's why it is good enough to sell.

>> 
>> Too bad.  In actuality, the conversions, when listened to on
>> the IIGS with proper speakers, are actually quite faithful to
>> the original MP3s.
>
>Well, true, but I think of it this way...in order for me to enjoy them on
>the mac, I need only download and listen. For the IIgs, I must download,
>convert to that format it expects, copy it to a zip disk, unplug my zip
>drive, take it into the next room, hook it up to the IIgs, boot up, copy
>the file to my hard drive (if I want to do that, or just leave it on the
>disk), and then listen to it. And it will essentially be the same sound
>I'm listening to in the end. Now, if I was spending more time on the IIgs,
>perhaps. And maybe sometime if I want to impress some friends...but then
>most of my friends believe that I should just 'trash all of that old crap'

I guess that's why I do it, then.  I still use the IIGS a lot.
I like to word process and do some page layouts on it.
I still use it to log onto the internet on my shell account.  It
is nice and the music helps me relax.

Besides, I have a 1GB drive on it plus a Zip drive, so why
not?  It is fun and I have the space!

To each his own, of course.

>> For the record, Oversampler on the IIGS does not take
>> AIFFs.  They take a type of WAV file.  Specifically, 8-bit
>> unsigned.  I think AIFFs are always signed (not sure).
>> Waves can be signed or unsigned.  Oversamply takes the
>> unsigned ones.
>
>Hm. I'm not exactly sure what signing is, sorry. Is it like the byte-order
>endian encoding that some of the sound formats have within them? (Try
>playing a big-endian AIFF file in a program expecting a little-endian
>format, under windows, and watch the glee. I think the program that did
>that was Goldwave, though I'm not sure...

Sir, you are reading my mind.  Not only did you guess I
was using Goldwave, but apparently Goldwave is the
only program that calls big-edian and little-edian signed
and unsigned (any program that I know of, that is).  ;-)